The compassionate way.

The Dalai ‘Lama once said “Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.”

If this is so, if compassion is part of the business of being human and essential for our survival, then we are failing badly when it comes to our treatment of asylum seekers in this country. We have, sadly, entered into a time in Australian society where our sense of our humanity, of what it is be a part of a society where compassion and human rights are valued and basic, is under threat.

And we live also in a time when the nature of the truth about our treatment of asylum seekers is twisted. It perhaps began with the ‘children overboard’ lie, and extends to this time when we are being sold the lie that putting men, women and children into indefinite detention in places like the Manus island detention centre is somehow a compassionate act because it is stopping the boats. The great deception is to disguise expediency and selfishness as compassion and to disguise ugly politics as the protection of Australian society. 

On Palm Sunday we celebrate a story in which traditionally a king or messiah would come into a city triumphant on a great steed, but Jesus chose to come into Jerusalem riding a donkey to reinforce that he was not that sort of king. And though Jesus had been preaching and teaching about peace, compassion and an alternative paradigm of life in which the first are last and the last first, on this day, everyone wanted a powerful, forceful king.

The palm Sunday message calls us to live out Jesus' alternative way of being; to live the compassionate way and to find way to welcome the stranger. On Palm Sunday I will be thinking of those who have sought asylum in this country, particularly those who are on Manus island or Nauru. I will ponder their journey, their sacrifice, their shattered hopes, and I will vow to work and pray for transformation in our politics and society that will bring a better, more compassionate way.

The Dalai Lama also said that “Compassion is the radicalism of our time.” As Christians we are called to shout 'hosanna' to this and to be just such a group of such radicals.

won't you fight for me?

I am reminded of the words of the people in the musical JC superstar, in which the crowd welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with the chant ...
Hey sanna Hosanna sanna sanna hey sanna hey sanna hosanna, 
hey Jc Jc, won’t won’t you fight for me, sanna hey sanna ho superstar. 
They expected, as we desire, a leader of power and force to save them from their repression. In our modern age this gospel lesson asks us if we are that much different. When we are feeling in danger from an enemy how many of us welcomed a George Bush of a John Howard who set themselves up as saviour figures and avenging angels of power? The message is no easier for us today to hear than it was for the people of Jerusalem. The power of Jesus and Jesus’ message is not of this world. It is the power of compassion, of healing and of grace. It is not a language that we yet understand but, it is a language we are called to seek to live as Christians even in our modern age. I believe that when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, he was weeping for all the generations and religions to come that would refuse to listen to the language of peace and healing.

Taming the Hosanna

We have tamed the word Hosanna more than a little in our churches also. 

It is a word of revolution. The word "Hosanna," like the words 

"Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani" is an Aramaic word--a reminder of our Jewish roots, 

our Jewish Jesus, our Jewish Messiah. 

But "Hosanna" is the prayer of Palm Sunday's triumphant (and triumphalist) Church, 

where "Eloi, Eloi" is the prayer of Jesus' rejection and despair. 

These are the old words of our story, words which are too freighted with meaning 

to be translated into any language, and so are left in Jesus' own tongue.  

We begin the liturgy today with Hosanna on our lips—our modern equivalent 

might be "Jesus saves!" except that does not sound very revolutionary.  

"Hosanna!" was a nationalist and revolutionary cry on the lips of an oppressed people.  

It was more like "Allah Akbar!" as shouted in the Israeli-occupied territories 

of Palestine today. It was inflammatory, not suitable for Sunday school.  

Roman occupation soldiers would have heard it as provocation, 

as a rock thrown by an Arab youth at Israeli occupation troops in the West Bank or Gaza.  

We sing it gladly as a triumphalist ditty, unaware of its political power. 

Perhaps the Church does not yet realize its own plight in the 21st century, 

or "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtahni" would be a more frequent prayer than once a year. 

We don't yet know the depth of our daily abandonment. 
Lucy Bregman

God's anti-empire

"When the crowds on this day so many years ago shouted Hosanna! to Jesus, they were certainly expecting great things politically, and perhaps militarily, from his arrival on the scene. They were buying into the notion that empire can and will offer them salvation of a certain type. They did not believe that Rome was capable of offering this salvation, since Rome was a nation that had many gods rather than the One. Only God’s anointed could rule God’s people with justice and righteousness. There are some who still await the coming of such a one.

The problem is that though they offer the right words, the hosannas that they sing invoke a salvation that is no solution to the world’s problems. A consistent witness of the Old Testament prophets was their condemnation of “empire” as a way of being God’s people in the world. Empire is the way of Egypt and its Pharoahs. Empire is the way of Babylon and Assyria. Empire is the way of Greece and the Seleucid Greek monarchs of Syria. Empire is Rome’s way of being in the world.

God’s people were established as a kind of anti-empire. They were formed in the Sinai wilderness around a covenant with a God whose desire was the restoration of a broken humanity. Israel was formed as an alternative to the pyramid class society of Egypt, with God dwelling among the people as sovereign, not an emperor or king. The people were seen as having equal standing, not with some occupying higher or lower status on the ladder. The power of empire to kill those who opposed it, supported by military might and religious belief was to give way to a power to attract all nations to the light of God, given in love to this special people. The hosannas of this day are misplaced when they expect a new Judean kingdom to supplant, but not replace the Roman Empire. Just as with the kingdom of Israel of old, the empire way would not work again.

The good news is that Jesus comes with a different set of expectations then we have, then the Judean crowd. Jesus comes not with a replacement empire, but to replace the claims and the authority of empire itself. If empire’s power lies in the threat of death to those who oppose it, then destroying the power of death trumps empire’s claim. Empire offers salvation to those lucky enough to be at the top of the pyramid. Love and forgiveness are for all humanity. Empires can and do fail. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Our problem is that our worldview is too small. Jesus has nothing but the restoration of all creation in his sights. We think of ourselves, our security in life, our personal vindication in death. Jesus thinks of others and their needs first, and finally the restoration of all things into right relationship with the Father."

http://www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de/archiv-7/050320-4-e.html

Haiku of the end.

Should we pity him,

Judas, called Iscariot?

He made his choices.

Eat my body-bread

and drink of my red wine-blood;

remember my life.

Even you, Peter,

you will also run away;

three times denying.

In garden prayers

he asks to be delivered.

His companions sleep.

They come with clubs, swords

and a resolve to end it.

He is arrested.

Tried by Caiaphas,

convicted of blasphemy.

Never any doubt.

Taken to Pilate

to receive his death sentence;

this King of the Jews.

Silence, his answer,

he calmly accepts his fate;

trusts himself to God.

The crowd finds its voice.

Convicted and condemned,

he is led away.

The cross is shouldered,

and taken beyond the gates,

to the killing place.

There is no mercy.

The man is fixed to his cross

and lifted up high.

The skies are darkened.

A cry of dereliction

signifies the end.

They mounted a guard

at the entrance to the tomb:

what did they expect?

© Ken Rookes 2017

Hail, Son of David!

Haiku for a grand entrance.

Jesus, the failed king

entering Jerusalem

riding a donkey.

The crowd goes crazy

greeting their king. Days later

they will turn on him.

Yet his words brought hope,

the promise of God's friendship.

Memories are short.

Hail, Son of David!

riding on your borrowed colt,

in your borrowed time.

© Ken Rookes 2017

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The ‘everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.
—Denise Levertov

I still do not want to die

“Lord, I believe, but help thou my unbelief, because I still do not want to die. I believe Jesus has power to raise the dead, only I do not want him practicing on me. I want a God who will cut my losses and cushion my failures, a God who will grant me a life free from pain. I want a God who will rescue me from death, who will delete it from the human experience and find another way to operate.

What I, what all of us, have instead is a God who resurrects us from the dead, putting an end to it by working through it instead of around it--creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair--resurrecting us from our big and little deaths, showing us by his own example that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday.”

Barbara Brown Taylor

i ain't dead

Paddy fell from the scaffolding on a construction job and was knocked unconscious. Mike ran for the doctor. The doctor came, he took one look at Paddy and said, "He's dead." Just then Paddy came to and heard what the doctor was saying. Bleary-eyed, he said, "I ain't dead." "Lay down, Paddy," said Mike. "Lay down. The doctor knows best."

As the story goes

Haiku of unexpected life

As the story goes

Lazarus from Bethany

had been dead four days.

When Jesus arrived,

sister Martha did complain:

What kept you so long?

If you had been here!

I am the resurrection

and the life, he said.

Yes, Lord, I believe

that you are the Messiah;

God's Son, in the world.

Mary fell weeping

at Jesus' feet. Lord, she said,

If you had been here!

Had you come sooner

my brother would not have died.

Take me to his tomb.

Jesus also wept.

They removed the entrance stone

to see life triumph.

© Ken Rookes 2017

Looking, walking, being

Looking, Walking, Being by Denise Levertov

"The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in."
Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That's
a way of breathing.

breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.